About
Suman Ghosh
“For me, painting is a way of looking more closely — and sometimes remembering things I had almost forgotten.”
Artist statement
My work begins with things I have seen, experienced or carried with me as memories.
I have always been drawn towards the real world — faces, human expressions, gestures, places and ordinary moments. I like the immediate connection that comes when someone recognises something familiar in a painting.
But I am not trying to reproduce reality exactly.
As the painting develops, observation begins to mix with memory and emotion. Certain details become sharper while others disappear. Colour may become stronger than it was in reality. Backgrounds may dissolve, edges may remain unfinished and sometimes a mark created accidentally by water becomes more important than one I planned.
That balance is what keeps me interested.
Watercolour plays an important role in the way I think and paint.
It is transparent, spontaneous and difficult to completely control. Once water and pigment begin to move across the paper, the painting starts making its own suggestions.
I work with layers of transparent washes, stronger areas of pigment, drawing and selective details. I often leave parts of the paper untouched and allow some areas to remain unresolved.
I like a painting to breathe.
The result may sometimes be realistic and sometimes more expressive, but I always want the subject to remain emotionally recognisable.
My journey
Art has been around me since childhood.
I grew up watching my father create large paintings and sculptures, and those images remained somewhere in my memory even while my professional life moved towards graphic design and advertising.
For more than three decades, I have worked professionally with design, photography, typography, film and visual communication. That experience inevitably influences the way I compose an image, but painting gives me something very different.
There is no client, no brief and no predetermined answer.
It is simply a conversation between the subject, the paper, the water, the pigment and me.
What inspires me
People inspire me most.
Faces that carry character, ordinary moments, Indian life, old memories, light, colour and the visual culture I grew up with all find their way into my work.
Indian mythology has also begun entering my paintings more consciously. These are images I have known since childhood — Durga, Kali, Shiva and other figures that exist not simply as religious imagery but as part of our memories, festivals, neighbourhoods, craftsmanship and visual culture.
I am interested in approaching these familiar subjects personally rather than merely repeating their traditional representation.